In Search of Darkness

A lot of Second Life is overly bright. Spacious virtual high-end fashion outlets with white washed walls are flooded with austere light. Trashy strip joints razzle dazzle you with an abundance of clashing colours. Fairy tale sims use ethereal windlight settings to make it all look so fluffy while tropical beaches blind you with the sun hitting the pale sand at high noon. Perhaps it is no wonder that from time to time one goes in search of darkness, such as can be found at Ironwood Hills.This sim is generally being described as a post-apocalyptic scene, but there’s no script, no written story, no set of rules that tell you how to interpret it. While you roam these strange lands, you are completely free to let your mind wander and allow your imagination to get the better of you. The blatantly ominous sound of a siren wavering in and out seems like a good warning to keep well away of this place, but the air is thick with mystery pulling you in deeper.

Several make-shift shelters with an almost homely touch to them seem to suggest that there are still people trying to live here. Possibly they are clinging on to what they once called home, trying to maintain some kind of foothold in the land of the living even if it is only in this desolate twilight zone. Perhaps this is simply their new normal.

The open door to an unexpectedly bright Gothic place of worship invites you in, but rather than experiencing a feeling of safety and comfort in this church, you are more likely to feel condemned for sins you haven’t even committed yet. Whatever is being worshipped in this place, it does not have goodness at its core. There certainly is enough other evidence at Ironwood Hills to suggest that darkness rules here.

If you wander these lands long enough, you may come across something left behind from better times, but I can’t shake the feeling that evil has this place firmly in its grasp and even in better times it was ferociously feasting on people’s life energy. Something has devoured this town and everybody in it. Whatever it is that still seems to have such a strong hold on this place today, I feel compelled to come back and discover all its secrets.